The Strange Case of Dorien Grey
by Rex Amundi
Summary: Wesley has his own tiny story, an impossible mystery.


The Strange Case of Dorien Grey  
  
Dislcaimer: I do not own any of the characters portrayed here.  
  
Wesley Wyndham-Price took a swig of whisky, to wipe away the event of the past few days. He couldn't believe that a man could be so callous. It all started a week ago, a woman walked into Angel Investigations. Angel himself was down in the cellar, getting some sleep, while Fred was still up in her room. Cordelia had called in sick and Gunn was getting some leads on a case of demon napping near LaBrea, leaving Wesley to mind the office on his own.  
  
She walked in late in the morning, she was a stunning, blonde hair, blue eyed young woman. 'I need help,' she said as she sat down. 'I think my husband may be trying to kill me.'  
  
'Really?' inquired an excited Wesley.  
  
'Yes, over the past few days he's been acting odd.'  
  
'Let me get you a drink. Coffee?'  
  
'Please, three sugars.'  
  
Wesley put the pot on and walked back into the room.  
  
'My name is Dorien Grey, my husband is Kenneth.'  
  
'This is all very intriguing, Mrs Grey. But I'm afraid Angel Investigations isn't exactly gear to this sort of case.'  
  
'You're a Private Detective, aren't you?'  
  
'Well, yes.'  
  
'And I will pay you well. Ten thousands dollars to the end of next week.'  
  
Was she serious, thought Wesley. Ten thousand dollars was an awful lot of money for a weeks work. It may be a demon case, there's only one way to find out. 'What do you want me to do?'  
  
The woman described her predicament. Her husband, Kenneth, was almost bankrupt, and Dorien was the daughter of a wealthy corporate type, old money. He'd asked her for money from her parents, but they'd insisted he pay his own way, yet they forked out for anything she asked for. Dorien Grey had a trust fund that she couldn't access until she was thirty. She'd heard strange noises in the house late at night, when he thought she was asleep. 'It may be nothing,' she explained. 'Kenneth has always said as long as we were together that was all he needed.'  
  
'And you think he may try to kill you for your money?'  
  
'Yes, if I die, the money all goes to him. Instant access, no trust fund.'  
  
'I suggest you leave immediately and find a hotel to stay in. I'll take the case.'  
  
'Thank you Mr . . .'  
  
'Wesley, just call me Wesley.'  
  
Mrs Grey pointed out an apartment opposite their house on the third floor. It was empty at the time, and it allowed him to have an observed view of the east face, and all of the outside. He setup a video camera and moved some camping gear in. He'd left a note for anyone else at Angel Investigations, telling them he'd taken a case which pays well.  
  
***  
  
He watched through the camera's eyepiece as they fought. Dorien had come back in the early evening and had put her suitcase on the bed. The bedroom was on the east face, and the large French windows allowed him to see inside. He saw Dorien throwing some clothes in, standing near her was her husband. He heard the dull shouting and kept filming. After a few minutes Kenneth drew the curtains and soon after the shouting stopped.  
  
At Ten PM a taxi pulled up to the front of the house and pipped its horn. Kenneth went out and talked to the driver, then he pulled away. Wesley watched patiently as the night passed, not a single sighting of Dorien was evident. It was morning when the curtains were drawn back. The suitcases had gone, and so had the bedsheets. Mr Grey was vacuuming the floor of the bedroom, going back and forth over a certain area. He switched it off and went into a part of the house Wesley couldn't monitor.  
  
***  
  
The behavious continued for five days, Mr Grey never left the house, and he was always up to something, moving around the house in the dead of night. Wesley got a call from Angel on Tuesday, he told him ten thousand dollars had been depositited into their accounts and that he was doing a good job. When Wesley explained the case, Angel was worried. He told Wesley he was going to call the Police, and his old friend Detective Lockley, and that he feared Mrs Grey was dead, but not by any demon.  
  
The Police came by later, and they saw Wesley waiting outside. They went up to the front door and knocked. Kenneth popped his head round. 'Hello.'  
  
'I'm detective Lockley. I have reason to believe you murdered your wife, may I ask where she is?'  
  
'My wife?' said a startled Kenneth Grey. 'Well she left me a few days ago, said she was going to get away from it all for a few weeks.'  
  
'Is that so?' asked Wesley.  
  
'Yes. Who are you?'  
  
'I'm a private detective. You're wife came to me at the end of last week, she told me you we're trying to kill her. I believe she may now be dead.'  
  
'No, that's not true. She left me.'  
  
'I don't think so,' said Wesley. 'I've kept a watch on your house since Thursday. All that time I have neither seen you nor your wife leave the house.' He held up a plastic carrier bag full of video tapes. 'Review my evidence please, Detective.'  
  
'Wesley, is their some way you may have not seen her leave? You did sleep, right?'  
  
'Yes, but I always recorded the house, I watched the tapes after I got up. And from where I was there's no possible way anyone could leave or come without me seeing them.'  
  
'Okay, can we look inside please?'  
  
'Of course, detective. I have nothing to hide.'  
  
They searched the house form top to bottom, every room, and there was no sign of Dorien. After twenty minutes the detectives left, all except Lockley and Wesley.  
  
'If she's gone,' started Wesley. 'Then why are all her clothes in the wardrobe?'  
  
'She may have packed light. You're clutching at straws.'  
  
'And that wig in the bedroom. I'm telling you she never wore a wig.'  
  
'Are you certain, it's all just circumstantional evidence.'  
  
Wesley walked up to Kenneth, who was having a drink in the kitchen. 'Where is she? What did you do to her?'  
  
'I told you, she left me.'  
  
Lockley had to escort him out.  
  
As he walked he thought about the possibilities of it being somehow demon-related. Neither him nor Lockley had said anything to each other about it. Could it be that a teleporting or a cross-dimensional demon got in and vanished afterwards. No, that was a crazy suggestion, the crime was human. He dismissed the possibilities forming in his head.  
  
***  
  
When Lockley reviewed the tapes, she had no choice but to go back to the house. Wesley did have a perfect spot for viewing, every angle covered. If she'd left, he'd have seen it. A whole team of forensic experts were drafted in, they checked every inch of the house. In the bedroom, where Wesley last saw her, there was a small patch of blood, only visible with ultraviolet light.  
  
'I can explain that,' said Kenneth Grey. He was in the bedroom with Wesley, Lockley and two techs dressed in white coveralls. They held the UV lamp steady over the blood stain, it was next to the bed. 'She cut herself about a week ago.'  
  
'So it's her blood?' asked Lockley.  
  
'Yes.'  
  
'Of course it is,' exclaimed Wesley, 'you killed her here, as she packed, right? Did you shoot her? No I would have heard the shot, and we didn't find a gun. So you stabbed her, you stuck it in her back and threw her onto the bedsheets. But you couldn't stop all the blood from leaking. Tell me, where are the sheets?'  
  
'I incinerated them,' replied a calm Kenneth.  
  
'Of course! The incinerator.'  
  
'Why would you burn the bedsheets?' asked Lockley.  
  
'We always did, Dorien was a stickler for cleanliness. If she stained something, she'd incinerate it.'  
  
'How was it stained?'  
  
'I accidentally spilt some coffee on it the other day, made a terrible mess.'  
  
Wesley turned to one of the forensic people. 'Take a look in the incinerator, you'll find ash of her.'  
  
'Sorry, sir,' said the forensics guy. 'We've already checked it out. That incinerator only burns at about three hundred degrees, it's not hot enough to destroy a body, and we found no remains.'  
  
Wesley looked at Kenneth Grey, he had a smile on his lips. 'Check the garden,' Wesley said.  
  
'But the video evidence shows he didn't go out into the garden,' commented Lockley.  
  
'Only the edges of the garden,' replied Wesley. 'He could have buried her close to the house.'  
  
'Do it,' ordered Lockley.  
  
'Wait a second!' said Wesley, he thought he had it. 'I read a story once, events happened like this.'  
  
'What happened?' asked the detective.  
  
'He cremated her body in the self-cleaning oven. It burned at nine hundred degrees, is that hot enough to dispose of the entire body?'  
  
'Yes, sir.'  
  
'Then he may have placed the ashes anywhere. Check every ashtray in the house, check his mothers cremation urn, check everywhere.'  
  
'My mother wasn't cremated,' informed Kenneth.  
  
***  
  
A minute passed, Wesley sat smugly on a chair while Lockley and Kenneth stood nearby. The white smocked tech poked his head round the door. 'Sorry, sir. It's not a self-cleaning oven. And that grass in the garden, it hasn't been disturbed for at least a month.'  
  
Wesley stood up sharply, 'For God's sake give me a break!'  
  
Kenneth had a wide grin on his face.  
  
'Why so happy?' asked Lockley.  
  
'My wife called me this morning, she said she was having a great time.'  
  
'Where did she call from?'  
  
'She didn't say.'  
  
'Mosley,' she said. 'Get the phone records for today. We'll see, sir.'  
  
The phone records came, and they had a call logged to the house at seven fifteen AM, placed from a garage in Columbia.  
  
'Payed someone to impersonate your wife, eh?' asked Wesley. 'Detective, did you ever find her passport?'  
  
'No passport was found.'  
  
'So you even went to the trouble of hiring someone to go out to Columbia, pretending to be your wife.'  
  
'Why would I do that?'  
  
'To clear yourself, obviously. If you could prove she was still alive, in a remote location we haven't been able to find her in I may add, then you would walk free.'  
  
Lockley came back into the room, she had a cell phone pressed to her head. 'Thank you,' she said then hung up. 'Airline. They had a Dorien Grey on a flight to Caracas three days ago. The steward described her pretty much as she was.'  
  
Wesley went down to the kitchen to get himself a drink. He was beaten, outmaneuvered by someone he knew killed his wife. The person that boarded that flight must've been a lookalike, someone hired to play her. After all, he could afford it now. Unless, he was wrong. Wesley thought he might just be. She may have left in the time it took him to switch tapes. He opened the fridge and took out a can of Pepsi, then a thought struck him. The kind of thought Newton had when an apple dropped on his head, he'd solved the case. He walked back into the room, Lockley was appologising for the actions taken against him.  
  
'As I say, we can't apologize enough.'  
  
'It's quite alright, you're only doing your job.'  
  
Lockley handed him a card. 'When your wife get's back, please tell her to contact us.'  
  
'She won't be coming back,' said Wesley proudly. 'She's quite dead. I assume you had someway of making everyone believe she'd gone for good. Ran off with a Columbian pipeplayer or something, never to return.'  
  
'Wesley, I was explaining that we have to go. We've combed every square millimetre looking for her bones or in fact any part of her. We've found nothing, not even a flake of ash. She's in Columbia.'  
  
'She has gone somewhere, detective. She's in Mr Grey's digestive tract, not a very nice holiday resort, and there are certainly no phones. He ate her.'  
  
'What?' exlaimed Kenneth. 'How dare you?'  
  
'Of course, as the forensic expert tells me, the only way to be sure is to check his . . . leavings. You were wrong if you thought you'd digest all of her, cells will remain, and we'll find them.'  
  
Kenneth Grey sat down on his easy chair. 'How did you know?'  
  
In full Poirot mode Wesley straightened himself up, every great detective confronts the criminal with his crime in the last scene. 'Simple math. You haven't left the house for several days, yet the fridge is crammed with food, particually meat. The meat you couldn't eat because you had to consume your wife. The wig was her hair, that, you couldn't eat You are a sick man, and you will get help.'  
  
'How could he eat the organs and bones?' asked Lockley. 'He must've because we found no trace.'  
  
'I found a pestle and mortar in the kitchen cupboard. I don't think I wouldn't be incorrect to guess he ground them up and sprinkled them on her flesh.'  
  
As Wesley walked away, he had a sense of satisfaction. He'd avenged the killing of Dorien Grey, a woman who had to suffer the indignity of being eaten, post mortem. 


End file.
